Anna Karenina eBook

“No,” said Kitty, blushing, but looking
at him all the more boldly with her truthful eyes;
“a girl may be so circumstanced that she cannot
live in the family without humiliation, while she
herself...”

At the hint he understood her.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Yes,
yes, yes—­you’re right; you’re
right!”

And he saw all that Pestsov had been maintaining at
dinner of the liberty of woman, simply from getting
a glimpse of the terror of an old maid’s existence
and its humiliation in Kitty’s heart; and loving
her, he felt that terror and humiliation, and at once
gave up his arguments.

A silence followed. She was still drawing with
the chalk on the table. Her eyes were shining
with a soft light. Under the influence of her
mood he felt in all his being a continually growing
tension of happiness.

“Ah! I’ve scribbled all over the
table!” she said, and, laying down the chalk,
she made a movement as though to get up.

“What! shall I be left alone—­without
her?” he thought with horror, and he took the
chalk. “Wait a minute,” he said,
sitting down to the table. “I’ve
long wanted to ask you one thing.”

He looked straight into her caressing, though frightened
eyes.

“Please, ask it.”

“Here,” he said; and he wrote the initial
letters, w, y, t, m, i, c, n, b, d, t, m, n, o,
t. These letters meant, “When you told
me it could never be, did that mean never, or then?”
There seemed no likelihood that she could make out
this complicated sentence; but he looked at her as
though his life depended on her understanding the
words. She glanced at him seriously, then leaned
her puckered brow on her hands and began to read.
Once or twice she stole a look at him, as though
asking him, “Is it what I think?”

“I understand,” she said, flushing a little.

“What is this word?” he said, pointing
to the n that stood for never.

“It means never,” she said; “but
that’s not true!”

He quickly rubbed out what he had written, gave her
the chalk, and stood up. She wrote, t, i,
c, n, a, d.

Dolly was completely comforted in the depression caused
by her conversation with Alexey Alexandrovitch when
she caught sight of the two figures: Kitty with
the chalk in her hand, with a shy and happy smile
looking upwards at Levin, and his handsome figure
bending over the table with glowing eyes fastened one
minute on the table and the next on her. He
was suddenly radiant: he had understood.
It meant, “Then I could not answer differently.”

He glanced at her questioningly, timidly.

“Only then?”

“Yes,” her smile answered.

“And n...and now?” he asked.

“Well, read this. I’ll tell you
what I should like—­should like so much!”
she wrote the initial letters, i, y, c, f, a, f, w,
h. This meant, “If you could forget and
forgive what happened.”